Internships & Practicum

A key component to advancing our mission of partnering with the local community to achieve health equity for DC residents and cultivating the next generation of community-oriented healthcare providers is mentorship. The Rodham Institute enthusiastically engages and supports interns throughout the academic year.

We are unable to offer any internships at this time. We kindly ask that you check back next semester.

Rodham Institute Past Interns:

Sadie Ahari

Sadie Ahari is a graduate of GWU and has earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She is a graudate of Johns Hopkins master's in health science in mental health through The Bloomberg School of Public Health. Sadie enjoys working in health communication and management roles where she can educate and help people of all ages. For fun, she enjoys working with animals, specifically with dogs and their owners on behavioral training.

Updates:Sadie received her MPH from Johns Hopkins

Madie Alexander

Madie Alexander is a graduate of Telluride High School in Telluride, Colorado and an intern for the Rodham Institute. She is honored to have the opportunity to work with Dr. El-Bayoumi and the Rodham Institute in their efforts to end health disparity in DC and to generate future leaders and innovators. She is very interested in studying medicine, as well as dedicated to serving the community on a local, national and global scale. Back in Telluride she is employed by the local physical therapy center, Peak Performance Therapy, and is looking forward to mentoring under Dr. Gloria Beim in the coming year. She also enjoys skiing, soccer, running and karate.

Updates: Madie is currently a sophomore in college and has a full scholarship from the Boettcher Foundation and is attending Colorado College.

Amanda Alhelou, MD

Amanda Alhelou was a fourth-year medical student at the Lebanese American University (LAU). She has always been interested in working on the improvement of health disparities and in achieving health equity.; this is why she decided to do a one-month elective at the Rodham Institute.

During her elective, she had the opportunity to work on the HELP project to encourage underprivileged children to seek a better education and enter the medical field. She also had the chance to participate in the walking clinic where physicians would walk around D.C. to check up on the homeless. The Rodham Institute taught me how each one of us can help in improving the social determinants of health to serve the well-being of our community as a whole.

Noor Amin

Noor Amin is a senior at Sidwell Friends School in Washington DC. This internship has given her the opportunity to pursue medicine beyond the scope of the classroom. Not only has received hands-on experience with physicians and researchers, but she has toured each ward of DC, learned about the residents’ needs, and now has a better understanding of how various social determinants of health, such as education and food accessibility, affect communities. Noor believe's that she has acquired a more holistic view of medicine, and she is excited to continue this area of study in the future.

Maya Barrow

Ms. Maya Barrow was an Intern for the Rodham Institute. Ms. Barrow received a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology, with a minor in Chemistry from Virginia Commonwealth University. She joined efforts with the Rodham Institute to help launch the Institute’s H.E.L.P. initiative in 2014, a program designed to introduce middle and high school students to careers in STEM-H fields, teach students team building skills, improve their health literacy, and encourage students to pursue higher education. Committed to youth empowerment and health equity, Ms. Barrow is honored to have the opportunity to work with the Rodham Institute in the Institute’s efforts to cultivate future generations of innovative, community-oriented leaders.

Updates:Maya is currently finishing the last year of her Masters program at NCCU. Her thesis: Breast cancer health disparities among the African American population

Michelle Berger

Michelle Berger is a senior majoring in Sociology at The George Washington University. She is interested in public health, social determinants of health, and health equity. Her senior thesis concerns the sociological study of stress, and her work for Rodham involves studying the relationship between stress and disadvantage. She is originally from Boston, but hopes to spend the next several years in DC involved with research and policy in this field.

Hira Chowdhary

Hira Chowdhary is an enthusiastic advocate for public health and community-oriented primary care practice, both locally and globally. Through her experiences and professional pursuits, she quickly learned how trauma, poverty, and stigmatization play a crucial role in the adoption of healthy—or unhealthy—behaviors at all developmental stages. Her desire to become an advocate for education in healthcare at the individual, community, and structural levels was invigorated as she witnessed how health outcomes were mediated by socioeconomic status, education and culture.

Interested in finding interdisciplinary solutions to health problems, she majored in Biochemistry and Sociology at Austin College in her home state, Texas. She later completed a Masters in Medical Sciences at the University of North Texas Health Science Center before pursuing a Masters in Public Health at the George Washington University Milken Institute of Public Health in the District of Columbia. As she immersed herself in the study of public health, she translated the community-centric themes from her past experiences into her projects. With each new undertaking, she has tried to find ways to blend patient-centered, community-oriented health perspectives and primary care delivery.

Her engagement with the Rodham Institute has been fueled by her commitment to education, public health, and early-childhood development. She has been involved with the Institute since 2013 and hopes to continue to contribute to their efforts.

Currently, she is working as a research assistant in the Division of Cancer Survivorship at the George Washington Cancer Institute where she works to improve the continuity of care and quality of life for cancer patients and survivors. Looking forward, Hira hopes to become a reflective practitioner with the skills to address complex issues that community health, using empathy as a tool to engage with the people she works alongside.

Michelle and Michael Corinaldi

Michelle and Michael, local high school students, volunteered with the Rodham Institute and made a difference in the community. During the Barry Farm’s community Hub summer health expo, they were part of the colon cancer screening and hepatitis education booth. While volunteering at the at the health festival, they noticed that the recreational center had very few books. Michelle worked to mobilize donations and they were able to provide more than 1000 free books to start library at the recreation center. This contribution is going to be the basis of a new “Read Aloud’ program.

Updates: Michelle is currently a student at VCU

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Esme Fahnestock

Esme Fahnestock is a Colorado native and is a graduate of Telluride High School. She is very pleased to have had the honor to work with Dr. El-Bayoumi and the entire Rodham crew.
She would like to thank them for opening her eyes to the health issues both in D.C. and around the world. She will never forget what the institute taught her as she pursues her education and continues working to decrease the disparities in health issues throughout the world.

Updates:Esme is starting her freshamn year at Middlebury College in Middlebury VT on scholarship

Kunal Khurana

Kunal Khurana is a student in the Seven Year Liberal Arts and Medical Education Program at Boston University. A DC native, he has worked as an intern for Rodham Institute since May 2015. He continues to work closely with Dr. El-Bayoumi, Dr. Chang, and Dr. Winston on a wide-ranging set of research projects. He is particularly interested in health policy and management, health infrastructure, and social determinants of health. He is intent on pursuing a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) in the near future.

Daniel Mays, MD

Daniel Mays was a senior medical student at the GW School of Medicine and was also studying health policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Between 2014-2015, he spent a year in Uganda performing health policy research on issues that impact Ugandan community health workers. Amid the attention to global health issues, Daniel was unable to ignore the health and socioeconomic disparities that exist right here in Washington, DC. He has now committed his medical career to practicing equity- and community-oriented primary care. In preparation for this practice, Daniel is seeking to better understand the roots of poor health and health disparities in our city, and he joined the Rodham Institute as an intern in order to deepen his understanding through active participation. Daniel worked on various projects ranging from organizing other medical students to engage in community health research through Rodham to working with Rodham Institute staff and GW faculty on incorporating concepts of health equity and disparities into the medical student curriculum.

Updates: Dr. Mays is currently doing his Internal Medicine residency at Mt. Sinai Hospital in NYC. He is one of the founders of the Health Equity Scholars Program.
through GWU Medical International Office and Rodham Institute - est 2017

Beth Williams

Beth Williams is a senior at Ouray High School in Colorado. She is excited to be interning with the Rodham Institute and to have the opportunity to learn about issues regarding public health more in depth. Beth has had the opportunity to learn about the barriers that must be overcome in order to achieve health equity. She has enjoyed the opportunity to see challenges that communities face are very different with her own eyes, and seeing the resilience of these communities. "I'm grateful that the Rodham Institute has given me a worldly perspective which I was previously lacking, and that I can continue to grow upon for the rest of my life." -Beth

Updates: Beth will be attending the University of Denver in the fall, and plans to major in International Studies

Chris Williams

Chris Williams is interning with the GW Rodham Institute as part of his Master of Public Health practicum experience. He assists with logic model development, impact assessment, and community engagement activities. For his full-time employment, he serves as the Academic Affairs Senior Policy Manager at the Alliance of Academic Internal Medicine, where he manages medical education policy development for undergraduate and graduate internal medicine.

Merissa Zeman, MD

Merissa Zeman was a third-year medical student at the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences. She was born in D.C. and raised in Maryland. She briefly left the D.C.-metro area to attend the University of Michigan, from which she obtained her B.S. in biology in 2011. After taking two years off to pursue research in nuclear medicine radiology and publish, Merissa started medical school at GW in 2013. She has an interest in community health, health equity, and working with underserved populations. As a medical student and future physician, Merissa hopes to serve as an agent for positive change in the local and global community and to empower others to do the same.

Updates: Graduated from GW Medical School in 2017 and is currently during her Radiology Residency at GWU.